Turn that weakness into a strength

According to one of the world’s leading military strategist – Karl von Clausewitz – in war, the big army will beat the small army. This is known as the principle of force. The army that can concentrate the most amount of force in the battlefield will prevail. It is not that much different in the business world. The big fish eats the small fish because the big fish is stronger than the small fish.

And the bad news is: You Are The Small Fish.

You can’t fight the big fish head on. You can’t outswim the big fish. You can try to hide and pray that the big fish doesn’t come into your playground and muscle you out. But there is something else that you can do. Instead of trying to hide or shield that weakness that you have, you can turn it into a weapon and use it to attack your bigger competitors. It may sound incredulous but it can be done and it has been done before. Here are some of the things that you can learn from companies that have done it.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car
Who’s No. 1 in rental cars? Most people will think of Hertz. Who’s No. 2? Most people will say Avis. Avis has a famous tagline that goes, “We Are No. 2 So We Try Harder”. So, if Hertz is No. 1 and Avis is No. 2, why would you buy from anyone else. That was Enterprise’s problem. It was the small fish in this battle – relatively speaking.

What Enterprise did was brilliant. It turned its weakness – its relatively small size - into an advantage. It created the perception that it is more customer-oriented by offering delivery and pick-up service to its customers. When you rent a car from Enterprise, they will deliver it to your home or office. Once you are done with the car, they will pick it up again. Enterprise used the tagline “Pick Enterprise. We’ll Pick You Up.” to communicate this differentiating idea and it soon overtook the giants.

Use your smaller size to do the things that your larger competitors cannot do.

Danovel

Danovel is a relatively small furniture maker that has been making very high quality sofas since 1960. The furniture market is a brutally competitive one and Danovel faced three challenges. One, it is the small fish. Two, its factories are located in one of the most expensive places in the world to make furniture – Singapore. Three, it still makes furniture mostly by hand because its people are accustomed to that. How to turn these weaknesses into strengths? Danovel repositioned itself as “The Handcrafted Fabric Sofa” which immediately tells customers that it is premium and it should be very comfortable. Being handcrafted, customers are willing to forgive you for taking a longer time to make the sofa – hey, it’s handcrafted after all!

By positioning itself as ‘handcrafted’, Danovel is seen as a specialist and people have the (wrong) perception that specialists are small. And they are OK with specialists being small! They kind of expect specialists to small players. It’s too early to tell if this strategy will work in the long run but the signs are encouraging. Danovel managed to generate a lot of interest when it participated in a recent furniture show.

By the way, I dislike fabric sofas because they are hard to clean. And when I was studying in the States, I had a fabric sofa in my apartment. During winter, sitting on that sofa generated lots of static electricity. That is probably how I got my electrifying personality. But when I first sat on one of those Danovel fabric sofas with its feather sandwich construction, I sat for three hours. It was that comfortable.

VibroPower

VibroPower is a maker of power generators that are typically powered by diesel engines. Some of these power generators are powered by 16,000 cc engines and they are as big as three master bedrooms joined together. What was VibroPower’s weakness? They don’t have their own diesel engines. They buy diesel engines from Cummins, Perkins, Volvo Penta, and others. This could be a problem because these engine suppliers also make their own brand of power generators. Customers will say, “Hey, you are not the real thing. So, you have to sell to me much cheaper or I will just buy from Cummins.”

How do you overcome a weakness like that? What VibroPower did was to reposition itself as “The Custom Power Specialist”. This is like saying, “Yes, we don’t manufacture our own diesel engines but so what? This simply means is that we can use whatever engine is the most suitable for your needs. We won’t force anything on you. We customise based on your needs.”

How well does it work? Again, too early to tell but at least the strategy is sound.

WHAT IS YOUR WEAKNESS?
What is the one thing that your competitors can use to clobber you? Can you turn that weakness into strength? You should at least try. If you can turn your weakness into strength, at the very least, competitors have one less arrow that they can use to shoot you.

Jacky Tai is a Principal Consultant of StrategiCom (www.strategicom.com), a B2B branding specialist headquartered in Singapore and operating in 11 cities including Kuala Lumpur. As Principal Consultant of StrategiCom, Jacky works with a crack team of talented consultants and researchers to help B2B companies across various industries gain an unfair advantage over competitors by effectively differentiating, dramatising and communicating the brand. Jacky is the author of two highly-acclaimed branding books – Transforming Your Business Into A Brand (2007), Killer Differentiators (2008) and Get A Name! (2009) He can be reached at jacky.tai@strategicom.com.